How much money does a professional athlete have to make to be considered the cream of the money makers? According to CNNSI.COM it's $14.5 million dollars. Doesn't that seem like a small amount in today's era of multi-million dollar endorsement deals? Not if you're name is Tiger or you play for the New York Yankees.

Go read the list, the comments CNNSI made and then come back for a real break down of the numbers.

Some of the surprising things that shake out of the numbers:

Statistically you stand a better chance of making huge money as a basketball player.

Tennis players are in the poor house.

The endorsement money is in golf.

Check out the following graph showing the total amount of compensation earned by each sport in the top 50.

Based on the numbers it looks like the real money is in basketball. The top 50 richest athletes are mostly basketball players with 21 out of the 50 representing. Poor tennis tries to play with the big boys with one athlete.

The next graph dives deeper and shows the total compensation in a sport per athlete. Here are the number of athletes in each sport:

Auto Racing - 3
Baseball - 17
Basketball - 21
Football - 6
Golf - 2
Tennis - 1

When you run the numbers you end up with the graph:

Ouch. Who knew baseball's top earners paled in comparison to the rest? Look at the amazing numbers that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson put up. Amazing.

Tomorrow we're going to get into the percentages and run through the individual data.

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